Legato
by BlueberryAndPancake
Summary: Despite his initial reluctance, he teaches her how to play the instrument. In return, she translates the sound into music and a restoration to life. They didn't know how much time was left before the inevitable divergence of their paths, but it was enough for the two to find themselves entwined together within eighty-eight keys: Fifty-two white and thirty-six black. Please RxR!
1. Intrada

**A/N: BlueberryMuffin and ChocolatePancake here. We're gonna take a different approach to this story, and hopefully it wouldn't turn out half bad. Also, less A/N. Ya don't go to a movie and the first five minutes is commentary and then the director's like, "Let's get going here!"**

 **Reviews will be much appreciated!**

 **So, with that said, let's get g- *shot***

 **Disclaimer: I do not own Vocaloid, nor any of its characters. Same thing goes with anything associated with music companies.**

* * *

"Intrada"

 _A musical introduction; prelude; present in 16th and 17th century music_

* * *

Len Kagamine couldn't properly recall the last time he played real music.

Any other person who so happened to witness the 16-year-old blonde and his ebony grand piano would have said otherwise, however. It didn't matter if it was a bypassing kid strolling through the small city, or if it was an elderly musician who often rushed to and fro between concerts and music schools. Many stopped to listen for a minute or two, maybe give him a few glances as he worked on the Steinway instrument. Occasionally there would be a small group of girls from his school who would giggle and peek in the gold-and-white wallpapered room to watch him.

Except it wasn't a room. The confined space to him was synonymous to a prison.

Perhaps the last time he actually played something other than meaningless noise was somewhere around first grade. He vaguely remembered how he had been making his way back from the restroom, only to make a wrong turn and open the room to where a plethora of musical instruments littered the floor. Among them was an old Yamaha upright piano. The wood was slightly cracked and it was horribly out of tune, but it was still a curiosity to him.

When he opened the lid, he had put all five of his tiny fingers on the bottom of the keyboard and glided them up to the top, momentarily struck by the sharp yet oddly fascinating sound it created.

A glissando, they called it, though he didn't know that just yet.

Perplexed by his absence, his teacher had scoured up and down the school halls until she walked in on him trying to imitate the melody of a song the students had sung to during music time. The bang of the door and the silence that followed told the young boy that he had been caught, and would most likely get into trouble for skipping out on class.

But he didn't.

The teacher just stood there, her gaze quizzical rather than angry.

"Play it again," she demanded.

Len followed her orders.

When he went home that day, his mother had found a sticky note on the front of his arithmetic folder. It didn't take much longer for his life to soon become bombarded with piano lessons and black dots of notes marching up and down the sheets and sheets of music.

It was fun at first. Nobody told him, you must play this way, no, you can't play that way, because- well, you just can't. It's not _fine_ music.

But for most of his middle school musical career, he was often dragged from one playing style to another throughout several teachers. To say that he was artistically confused wouldn't be incorrect. The identity held in his playing before dulled so quickly that Len didn't know if it was his true self or a possessed version of him that was playing the piano.

Most often he would use an exaggerated bravado that his main tutor would urge him to play in, but he felt confined. To never experiment the way he wanted but rather walk a set path came with the price of never knowing true struggle or victory.

At the edge of the town he lived in was a theater. More often than not he would be requested to go on the stage with the red curtains and put on a performance for the audience to see, be it for a recital or a piano competition, and he had never received anything less than a loud, prolonged ovation.

Someone had commented that Len was "the second Beethoven".

He assumed it was a compliment.

* * *

Len was working on one of Chopin's waltzes when he saw her.

The blonde girl was standing outside the prison, big cerulean eyes fixated on the black and white keys. The clunky orange messenger bag that hung from one of her small shoulders seemed to oddly emphasize how tiny she was.

She was one of the many people who stopped by to listen to his playing. For the most part, Len didn't pay much attention to the people who came and listened to his playing, though he did remember the ones who passed by on a near daily basis. The pigtailed girl who passed by every other day with a bagful of leeks, often accompanied with a blue haired man holding an ice cream cone. The teacher from the high school who would nod in silent approval whenever he heard him play.

From what he could tell, she was a new student at the high school a few blocks away from his home. Maybe she moved here quite recently. He wouldn't have known much else, for his parents had insisted that he was sent to the elite private school made for "the gifted." It was a zoo of young prodigies, child stars, and the like. Afterwards, he would come home to practice piano for three hours to grind out all that "remarkable aptitude" he had within him.

Most of his tutoring fell on Tuesdays and Fridays, though a few things would occasionally turn up to taunt his schedule. Nothing he could do about the fact that there were teachers throwing him instructions left and right, often coming to disputes on how to teach someone with such a "exceptional potential" as he. His parents weren't much help to his situation, either.

His dad wasn't home that much, often rushing between shifts at the hospital as a surgeon.

And consulting in his mom for any help was out of the question. As one of the more important managers of a large music company, it would seem befitting that her only son inherited the genes of musical intelligence. Len was pretty sure that going against that would be quite the shock for her (and her reputation, though it would be better for that to be left unmentioned).

What he wouldn't give to live like a normal person!

The girl standing outside seemed fairly normal enough, and he wondered in the back of his mind what it would be like to live her life. Somehow he found it strange how she had stood there for an hour, all of her focus on the piano and nothing else.

Creepy wasn't exactly the word. Nor was unsettling. Just- strange. Something he couldn't exactly pinpoint about her.

Presently, he heard a scuffle and a commotion outside. Len nearly forgot that it was Tuesday.

The person he greeted at the door wore a stern face, the dark red eyes speaking of strict discipline. Len had always felt a little intimidated, but he shied away from questioning him even when his opinions conflicted that of his tutor.

When Len wandered back into the room a few minutes later, with Akaito Shion by his side, the girl had disappeared.

* * *

She kept coming back.

Len wasn't sure what her purpose was. She didn't look like someone who possessed any experience in music, nor had Len seen her at any concerts before. For all he knew, she could have just been another one of those silly high school students who had some pointless infatuation on him. Or rather, on what he had. Physical appearance not excluded.

(On the other hand, he really wished that a certain other blonde with the side ponytail would stop snapping pictures of him with her flip phone.)

He wouldn't have been surprised either way, for he had already been subject to such things for most of high school; materialism was quite the powerful thing, after all. Most people wouldn't have been able to afford the piano he sat at right now.

She tapped on the window softly with her right hand.

"Hey."

The audacity! Len decided to ignore her.

"Hey!"

One of his fingers slipped and pressed a wrong note. He gritted his teeth in annoyance.

As paradoxical as it seemed, Len hated when people disturbed him when he was playing piano, even if he had likewise feelings towards the instrument. He was a man of routine (though it would be more accurate to say that he was forcefully broken into it) and anything that conflicted with it made him quite irritated.

Abruptly leaving his piano and walking over to the window, he slid open the glass pane with a faint scowl on his face.

" _Hey_ , kid. What do you need?"

"I'm not a kid!"

"Could have fooled me." It wasn't a lie, either. The girl's pale, small stature complemented her childlike appearance. She seemed unusually frail, as if the autumn winds that blew by just then would have knocked her over and carried her away with ease.

"Not much I can do about that. Even my doctor can't." The girl quirked a smile and nodded her head towards the direction of the piano. "Besides, I just wanted to hear you play, is all. I couldn't hear the music too clearly, so I figured, might as well open the window."

For some reason, he felt too tired to argue. Though he was less than welcome of her presence.

Len shrugged. "Suit yourself."

He sat back down on his piano and flipped open to Chopin's Fantaisie-Impromptu. It was well known by many musicians, novices and professionals alike, and he had to work on it for his upcoming recital.

 _Put on a performance,_ his teacher had demanded. _Exaggerate and be dramatic._

Out of the corner of his eye, though his fingers were still working on the keys, he could see that the girl was completely still except for her eyes, which flicked ever so slightly between his fingers and the grand piano.

It seemed like a long time before he finished the piece. He took his hands off the piano.

"That good enough for you?"

"Why wouldn't it be? I like it." She gave a small laugh. "But you were playing a little... angrily. Like you were tensed up. Was it because I annoyed you in the middle of practicing or something?"

"It's called performing. That's what my teacher calls it, at least."

The girl propped herself up on her elbows on the window frame, a look of wonder etched all over her face. "Wow, that's nice. Must be wonderful to have a teacher. I wish I had one myself, but my parents won't even get me a piano or something, since they think it's a waste of time and all that. The best I can do is with this old cracked piano at school. But I don't see why-"

"Look, kid..."

"I'm not a kid!"

Len sighed in exasperation.

"...don't bother me again, okay?"

She stood there, silent for a moment.

"That is, when I'm playing piano," he added, wondering if he had been too harsh. "Just stay out there and watch and listen with all the others."

"Ooh. Alrighty. Guess I'll be seeing you around then." The blonde girl nodded and readjusted the bag on her shoulder, spinning on her heel to head back.

He waited until she turned around the corner of the nearby bakery to walk over to the open window and close it. His hands still on the windowsill, he spotted a group of girls passing by and waving to her, and the girl broke into a run to catch up with them. Probably to go to the library or the newly-opened dress shop like a group of normal people with normal lives.

He felt a little envious.

Len didn't know what came over him, but he decided to walk back to his piano and leave the window open.


	2. Ostinato

**A/N: Hello~**

 **According to ChocolatePancake, sometimes A/Ns in published mangas talk about random stuff, like how you can't sneeze with your eyes open or something. But I'm too lazy to do that.**

 **Disclaimer: The day I own Vocaloid is the day I sneeze with my eyes open.**

* * *

"Ostinato"

 _A continually repeated musical phrase or rhythm throughout the entire composition; persistent_

* * *

Of course, the girl didn't listen. At least, she didn't choose to.

She wasn't one who took things too seriously.

To her, the open window was a silent green light for her to hang around at the window and chat with Len in between pieces. He usually replied with a nod or a grunt, maybe a "yeah" or a "not really" if he cared enough to open his mouth and respond.

From what she could tell, Len wasn't in the mood to bother with being social. He didn't mention it to her, but she guessed that the only reason he didn't shoo her away was because it would be even more tiring to correct the girl on the mistaken impression that they were now friends.

 _He's kinda cold._

Perhaps he was fine with things at the moment.

She dropped by at around 5:00, when everyone was scurrying home from work or school. It was the time where the streets would come alive with the bustling of noise, where a person would walk down the sidewalks so fast that one would have thought that he was late to an important meeting with his boss.

 _What's the rush for?_ She often wondered.

Even though it had been weeks since she moved here, she still found herself unaccustomed to the hasty atmosphere of the town. It seemed that no one had given a second thought to slow down and just enjoy life, maybe take a look at the pastel colored cakes through the window or the iridescent leaves of maple trees.

Other than that, the town was rather charming. It was rather a shame that no one ever took the time to acknowledge the beauty.

Though she liked to work hard and play hard, she still found the time to appreciate the small joys of life. In between rigorous studying and dabbling herself in whatever oddities that came along her path, she liked to sit and enjoy the gentle droning of the earth, engraving every little detail into her mind.

Even if it was trivial, there was always something that would occupy her mind when nothing occupied her hands.

She assumed that nobody would agree with her, though. Spontaneous plans and pointless joys were unnecessary. It seemed to be the misconception that, in order to avoid wasting your life, you always have to have a nailed-down plan and had to be off doing something great and booking your schedule up with events that would supposedly benefit you, turn you into a greater person, open the doors to a brighter future, hooray.

Whether they were doing it all out of their own will or out of aimless anxiety, she didn't know. It would probably be the latter.

 _But I think as long as you enjoy what you're doing, it doesn't really matter. It's not like you're sitting around in boredom and slowly rotting until death rolls around._

But in the end, it remained unchanged that the music permeating from the soundboard of the piano was her preferred source of peace. It was almost tangible in a way; even if (according to the MRI) her auditory nerve was slightly impaired and made it a bit harder to hear, the music was soothing enough that her troubles would temporarily melt away. Almost like an asylum, only it was composed of purely sounds and nothing else.

She just wished he wasn't such a deadpan and a grouch, though. But maybe his taciturn nature was a good thing. At least it was a break from the obstreperous, anxious atmosphere of the town.

When she was listening to him play, and occasionally chatting (at least, attempting to), she couldn't help but notice how people would stop by and stare at him with awe, as if he was some sort of exotic creature. They never spoke to him like she had, though, so she would save all talk for later until the wave of people continued to hurry on with whatever they were rushing to. She didn't want to appear any different from the normal folk.

Even if her friends and teachers had already treated her as anything but.

* * *

Len felt her gaze on him, even if a crowd of people came along to watch him and listen to him, momentarily turning her into just another inconspicuous being.

It was strange, though, how he was so oddly conscious of her presence. He did notice, however, that her random bursts of nonsensical chatter would be put on standby whenever another person would pass by. One moment he would hear the singsong yet conversational tone of her voice, and the next moment, he would immediately become aware of her sudden silence.

"You know, I've been thinking," she had said one day while scribbling homework answers down in her algebra 2 notebook, "you always come across these guys who buy, like, 50 cakes or so in elementary school arithmetic problems. And then the teacher would ask you what he would get if someone gave him 20 more, and then he would eat 32 of them, and then he would go to the bakery to buy another 17 cakes. In real life, the answer would be diabetes, but I had figured it's better to put down '55 cakes' instead."

He snorted and continued on playing.

"And here I am, in algebra 2. And now it's more like, if one of the cakes is 8 inches in diameter with a height of 4, but the other is 10 inches in diameter with a height of 3.5, which cake would be bigger and by how much? You ever wonder if the man from the bakery at the end of the street ever wondered about this? The orange marmalade cake there is really good, by the way."

(No comment from Len.)

It was sometimes pointless, and always random. Sometimes she would also stay quiet for an indefinite amount of time, but he felt that her brain was always relentlessly in motion, even when her mouth wasn't.

Her voice had trailed off when she saw a mother rushing her kid down the sidewalk, making her way to where Len sat pressing his fingers down on the piano.

The absence of her words was a silent indication that someone had come around again to gawk at him like he was some sort of a legendary entity. He had to admit that he hated it more than her chatter. He wouldn't show it. He would sit up a little straighter, replace the exasperated look on his face for one of a more concentrated nature, and perform with all the shenanigans his teachers would urge him to play in.

If someone had asked him how he was doing, the more palatable answer would be something along the lines of "Oh, I'm doing great, how about you?" rather than "Pretty bad, I kinda want to stab myself with a rusty knife right now."

 _It's a professional's job to always present a smile to the audience._

"See how that _genius_ plays the piano so _nicely_?" The mother had pointed at the blonde while tugging on her child's sleeve. Len would pretend not to notice her remark and continue on playing in a fake display of musical drama. "See how that boy is so talented and professional looking? If you practice enough, you might become as _great_ as him one day!"

The kid had nodded in response to his mother, his eyes wide with fascination and something that strangely resembled fear.

And then she had whisked him off to wherever they were headed to, in the same hurried fashion of any other person in town.

The girl waited until the two were gone to resume her discursive rambling. And Len would wait until then to resume the annoyed expression on his face.

In the end, he decided to settle on the conclusion that his awareness of her presence stemmed from the fact that she was the only one who talked to him like he was another average human being.

Another average, inconspicuous human who wasn't being deified by his money and talent and looks, nor being twisted relentlessly in the experimental milking of his musical abilities.

* * *

"You look kind of tired today."

"Because I am."

"Why?"

 _Because you keep coming around to annoy me when I'm already having enough problems with this damn piece of music._

"I dunno," Len replied, surprised that he actually had the energy to bother with her nonsense. "But I guess it's because I just got yelled at my teacher a couple days ago for insufficient practice."

"'Insufficient practice?'" The girl echoed, a perplexed frown tracing her lips. "You practice, like, three hours a day."

 _And who knows, maybe you're the reason why I got yelled at yesterday because apparently my playing is 'half-assed'. Now, can you please shut up?_

"Yeah, but apparently my teacher doesn't like it unless I play according to his instructions," Len grumbled, his eyes focused on the lines and lines of musical notes in front of him. He racked his brains for an easier method to play the left handed trios of the Mozart sonata, but he came up with none, much to his disappointment. "And not instructions as in technique, I mean instructions as in how I interpret the music, my hand movements, even facial expressions. I don't get it."

"Yeah, I don't get it either," she answered. The baffled look on her face was obvious, he judged by looking at her through his peripheral vision.

"I mean, if it's good music, so be it. It's weird how he wants you to play the piano to please his ears. Sounds kinda narrow minded, if you ask me."

"But I can't really go against him, he's so strict and everything..."

He never quite vented out his frustrations to anyone, much less the very person who unconsciously played a role in his frustration. It felt strangely relaxing, though, having somebody to complain to. Even if it was a complete stranger, a stranger who he had more than once wanted to punch in the face.

The girl didn't utter a single word until he finished.

For a moment, they just stood there, staring at each other.

"... so you don't like playing the piano?"

"Hate it. A whole lot."

"Would you think I'm weird if I told you that I really want to play it?"

"You're weird enough already, so it wouldn't really make a difference."

"Touche." She clicked her tongue. "But I think you don't _really_ hate the piano. It's the other stuff, like your teachers or something, that made you hate it. I'd be pretty mad if someone deemed my work to be anything less than art and forced me to create in restriction just because he disliked it."

He could tell from her tone that these words were coming out of a child with untainted imagination. She was still relatively free from the boundaries the world had to offer her, while he had spent his childhood being eroded of anything that caused even the slightest disagreement in (so-called) musicians and society in general.

Len was hit with another pang of jealousy.

Temporarily he couldn't think of anything to say (or rather, anything that wasn't rude), so he just followed her eyes drifting over to the piano. He could see it in her eyes, that she was envious as well- and yet the feelings between the two contrasted each other so much, it was painful. The emotion he held spoke of a resentful bitterness, while hers was more of a wistful longing.

 _She wants to play the piano pretty badly, huh._

Some other unfamiliar emotion surfaced within him. To Len, it was an unwelcome guest.

"What's your name?"

"Oh. Huh. Funny how we've been talking for quite a while and yet y-"

"Just give me your stupid name, dammit."

"Rin. Rin Koizumi."

"Yeah, yeah, okay. If you really wanna learn, come back around 8:00 on Sunday. Nobody really comes around during that time, and my parents will be out until midnight, so you can bother and annoy me all you want. Got nothing better to do anyhow."

Her eyes lit up. "Y-you mean it?"

"Jesus Christ, why else would I say it?" An irritated scowl crossed his face. "Now get outta here. I got a test to study for tomorrow."

Rin nodded eagerly and sped off down the sidewalk, the lump of a messenger bag swinging on her shoulder.

Len sighed and ran his hand through his hair, turning the golden strands into a frustrated mess.

Emotions were a necessity in art, even if they were faked. But sometimes he felt that such objects were nothing more than a nuisance in his life.


	3. Marziale

**A/N: Hey guys, ChocolatePancake here. Quick note; we apologize in advance if updates are irregular, since junior year's starting for us and things are awfully busy. BlueberryMuffin's in the middle of cross country too.**

 **I, for one, can't run long-distance to save my ass.**

 **Disclaimer: I... _huff huff..._ do not own Vocaloid... _pant pant_... nor any of its... characters... _*ass is not saved in the end*_**

* * *

"Marziale"

 _Martial and extremely strict; in a military style_

* * *

Len was already waiting when she rang the doorbell.

A blast of cool air hit him when he opened the door for Rin, her small body bundled up in a tight black and orange jacket. The weather had begun to get chillier at night ever since the beginning of autumn, and daylight was long gone already.

"Glad you could make it," he said in a gruff voice, helping her to hang up her jacket in the nearby closet. "Come with me down this hallway to the piano room."

Rin tried to keep her curious eyes from wandering as she walked down the long corridor with him. She felt that he was the type of person to frown at anything unnecessary. Always strict and quick to scold whenever she did something out of spontaneity.

Even so, she couldn't help but admire how embellished the house was. So unfitting of his character, yet she'd rarely seen anything quite as pretty as the framed oil paintings on the cream colored walls or the mahogany shelves that were full of fine china. Rin wondered with amusement what it felt like to be so rich that one could pass by something so visually appealing without so much as a second glance.

"Play the C major scale," Len demanded the moment he stepped inside the piano room.

Rin flopped down on the bench and pouted. "Aw, come on, I can play something harder than that..."

Her voice trailed off into a meek whisper. Rin had thought that his eyes were icy enough as they were normally, but she was proven wrong as an austere expression that she could only describe as freezing came over Len's face. She reminded herself to keep her rudeness in check the next time.

"Say that after you play it with _this_."

He plucked something out of a cup of writing utensils sitting at the edge of the music stand and placed an eraser on the top of her wrist. Rin could faintly smell the rubbery pink smell, and stared at the item as it teetered slightly. With a questioning glance at Len, she placed her hands on the keys and began to play.

It only took a few notes for her to realize the purpose of it all, when the eraser slipped off of her wrist and bounced on the floor.

A smirk tugged faintly at Len's lips.

"You do realize that even if the scale is comprised of entirely white keys, it's not going to be any easier," he lectured her, trying to keep the teasing tone out of his voice for the sake of professionalism.

He continued, "If anything, it makes it an infamously hard scale to master and play smoothly without adequate practice. The keys are the same length, but it's awkward for your hands considering that your thumb is much shorter than the rest of your fingers."

 _Your clumsy, unskilled fingers,_ he almost said.

He couldn't tell what Rin was feeling right now, her expression was so unusually deadpan.

Should he say anything more?

 _Maybe not now. She's going to suffer more down the road, that's for sure._

It was _his_ turn to enjoy the superiority that he had never had the chance to feel back then. This time around, _he_ would be the one to play the role of the stern-faced teacher, who would soundly upbraid the Len from roughly ten years ago when he had dropped the eraser in the same exact fashion as she did.

Well, not quite. Not quite the _same_.

Certainly, the look of pure determination on her face and nothing else completely contrasted his expression from back then. He had been nervous, embarrassed, anxious to please his teacher in every way possible. And each time, he was completely crushed.

Len could still feel the slap of the ruler on the backside of his hand from the first time he made a mistake, though years of feeling the flat wood against his knuckles had made him nearly numb to the sting that would follow afterwards.

Ah, how good would it feel to administer the same punishment to someone else?

The satisfaction he felt wavered a little as he watched Rin pick up the eraser without any of her usual unnecessary words.

She played at a much slower pace this time, presumably to reduce the hand movement that had caused her previous failure. It didn't work.

Len watched her as she picked up the offending item again and again, and some part of him twitched a little. He changed his mind. He _didn't_ want Rin to experience the same injury his teacher had and still was doing to him, be it the mental or physical one. And yet...

"Alright." She shook her hand a little, finally able to play four octaves with acceptable balance. "What's next?"

"Ah, well..." Len cleared his throat and regained the steel hard voice he had used before, trying to cover up the indefinable mixture of emotions that bothered him to no end. "Your hand movements are still too bulky. Not smooth enough. But it seems that you have solved the problem for the most part in a short amount of time, so we'll be moving on to arpeggios next. Then I'll ask you to sightread an easy piece."

The same old boring stuff again. Words of protest started to form on Rin's lips, but she closed her mouth forcefully when she saw Len lift one of his eyebrows, a frown on his face.

She snorted. "Bring it on."

* * *

The way Rin was so different from him made her appear rather odd to Len, though he had already told her himself that she was an odd enough person already.

But when he looked closely at her, he could see how surprisingly alike they seemed from the outside, though the juxtaposition of the two blondes somehow just emphasized their dissimilarities, ironically.

Same cerulean eyes, but one pair was cold and the other was fiery. Same golden hair, but his was slightly messy in the front and tied up in a ponytail at the back, while she wore clips to keep her hair neat, accompanied with a floppy white bow that seemed to hide some sort of lump on her head. Len couldn't quite tell what it actually was.

All his life he had longed to play the way she was playing right now. Not technique-wise, of course; she was far too inexperienced in that department.

For an advanced player like him, the way she shaped her phrases and played her staccatos could be described as something of a discordant cacophony to his, ahem, more _refined_ ears.

Except it sounded like the piano had been brought to life: vehement and vermilion and a bit violent. So similar to his own, yet hers sounded so instinctive and his had sounded so forced and overly dramatic. Like the light of a fire compared to the artificial glow of a light bulb.

Len didn't know whether he admired or hated her, so he just chose to fuel his latter feeling when her fingers formed yet another disorganized knot of wrong notes. He seized the opportunity to pick up the same thin, wretched stick that he had been controlled by for so many years.

The feeling of just picking it up was almost terrifying to him. It almost seemed to be some sort of living being, forever angry and eager to abuse, though his hand just met cold smooth wood instead the red-hot sting he was accustomed to.

But when he raised the ruler and brought it down, she took the impact without ever so much as a wince from the discomfort. It was almost as if she was immune to pain.

Len dropped his hand, an unsure feeling taking over his heart. He didn't feel any sympathy for the girl, he was certain of it, but when she wasn't looking, Len flung the ruler out the window as if it had been set on fire. It thumped harmlessly in a patch of wispy grass outside.

The sensation of it burned in his hand, but in a different way when he had been mercilessly slapped with it by Akaito.

* * *

The lesson was almost over when a sting shot through her brain, not unlike the one she received from the ruler, but what little discomfort she felt from that paled in comparison to the stabs attacking her head right now.

It was the same thing that started her pilgrimage from one hospital to the next. The doctors had been right that the recurrences would never yield, but Rin was determined to prevent her life from becoming a puppet to the little pains, elusive and sudden as they may be.

By some stroke of luck, her parents found better jobs at Crypton City a few months ago, where a hospital was conveniently located as well. Hopefully, it would be enough to finally pay off her medical expenses. She had once again been tossed from her previous home to where she was now.

It was tiring, but she had become used to it.

And her new doctor was so nice and told her so much about medicine and odd bits of scientific nonsense, like some sort of a friendly uncle instead of some grouch who just came to his job because, well, it was his job.

He was almost like a gentler, more fatherly version of Len.

She found it funny how the two even looked alike.

Rin couldn't remember much of it too well, though she did remember that her new doctor had prescribed her a specific painkiller for such headaches. She quickly turned away from Len, kneeling over to rummage through her bag, pulling out her water and the bottle of the mysterious pills. Hopefully the effects would kick in before the pain in her head got any worse.

"Uh, you okay?"

"Yeah, nothing much. I get headaches easily when I have a cold." Blame the time of the year where colds are spreading faster than E. Coli on room temperature meat. Rin wondered in the back of her (burning) head if Len liked biology class as much as she did.

One of her hands instinctively flew to her white bow, making sure that it perfectly concealed what was hidden underneath. She didn't want to repeat what happened upon an accidental removal of the ribbon in gym class, after it flew off during soccer.

Rin laughed and dropped her hand away from her head, quickly capping her water bottle.

 _I don't need any more pity._

"Hm." Len leaned back on his chair. "I don't really get colds all that often. But when I do get them, I become bedridden for days. It doesn't make much of a difference-"

"That's because you stay inside all day." Rin zipped her bag up and slung it over her shoulder. "You become unaccustomed to all the nasty stuff that's floating around during, say, flu season or something."

"So what do you say I do? Go outside and get sick?" They stood up and started heading back to his front door.

"Gotta start somewhere." She shrugged.

"Hmph. Anyhow, when do you want the next lesson to be? You can drop in anytime if it's between 6:00 and 9:00 in the evenings."

"Yeah, but, um, I'm not sure if I have enough... money to pay for lesso-"

"It's fine, don't worry about it," he cut her off, opening the closet where he hung up her jacket before. "But you do realize that if you're going to play the piano with me, you're going to have to put up with all of this? It's a commitment, you know, not just something you play with and toss aside."

"... yeah. Even with the ruler. Trust me, having your hand split open with some stick ain't anything compared to splitting your head open. Or, uh, something like that, I guess," she quickly added, stammering a little.

A look of horrified guilt flashed in his eyes when he remembered how he had taken that ruler to her knuckles. Len thought he'd been incapable of actually _feeling sorry_ for someone who he was pretty sure he disliked, but he was apparently wrong. "Oh. It, it won't happen again. I'm really sorry about that."

"Ooh, the great and mighty Len actually apologized?" She teased. "But, really, I don't really mind the ruler too much."

"What kind of a person do you think I am?" He snapped back, ears turning red. He flung her jacket at her a bit harshly, out of embarrassment. "I swear to God, I will _not_ go easy on you next time-"

"Fair enough. Go hard or go home."

Len sighed and opened the door, bracing his skin for the cold wind.

"You're a tough nut to crack."

"Damn right I am."

He attempted to return the aggressively determined glare that she shot at him, trying to meet her blazing blue eyes with his icy sapphires and remind her to curb that obnoxiously overconfident attitude of hers.

Instead, a small twitch at the corner mouth threatened a smile to his lips. But he pushed it down into his usual scowl before Rin could say anything about it.

"Bye, Rin."

"See you later!"

He watched her back as she walked out, until her figure disappeared around the corner of a building.


	4. Syncopation

**A/N: Hi!**

 **Random note, so when we're writing, we like to give characters traits based off of ourselves. Like Rin's interest in biology. I have this theory where since humans straighten out their form over evolution by leaning backwards, mankind would be doing backflips in the future, should the pattern continue.**

 **Disclaimer: Maybe the day I own Vocaloid is when humans evolve into back-flipping monsters. But today is not the day.**

* * *

"Syncopation"

 _A disturbance or interruption of the regular flow of rhythm_

* * *

She didn't visit him the next day.

Or the day after. Or the day after that.

It was strangely quiet even with the tune of the piano filling the room, but Len assured himself that he missed the peace.

At least he could concentrate on the sound emanating from the instrument instead of the background noise.

Still, it seemed that he was almost unused to the fact that there wasn't the chattering voice from the outside of his room or the clicking of her binders as she scribbled down equations and formulas. And in the evenings, he would find himself almost hearing the ringing of the doorbell while he was finishing up his homework or washing the dishes, then going back to whatever he had been doing when he realized it was just his imagination.

But, well, given her erratic behavior, maybe he shouldn't be too surprised at her inconsistency.

Len gritted his teeth when his finger slipped from a black note onto a white note, deforming the chord embarrassingly loud. God knows what Akaito would do to his hand with the ruler if he heard-

Oh. Yeah. The ruler.

He momentarily stopped playing to look out the window where it still laid in that patch of grass.

Damn it all. He let his eyes drift over to the translucent curtains, tied back with dark ribbons, telling himself that maybe staring at an arbitrary item would melt away the rebirth of those guilty feelings.

Len never really took a good look at his surroundings before. Never felt the need to, anyhow. But somehow, the absence of someone that he didn't even want to be there in the first place made him feel oddly obligated to do so. It would have appeared to be quite the sumptuous room to anyone else- an antique chandelier, polished maple shelves filled with books, a brown and cream couch set in the back.

It had everything, but he hadn't been aware of how empty it actually was until now.

He sighed and went back to playing his piano.

* * *

Len came down the stairs to the smell of banana pancakes. His eyes were bloodshot and his steps were sluggish, but he was otherwise the image of a model student from an elite private school: a freshly ironed uniform, notebooks and binders arranged neatly in his backpack, each page written in small print.

The blonde imagined that Rin's notebook would be scrawled in brightly colored gel pens, with doodles in the margin. He didn't know. He hadn't seen her for almost a week.

A tired shadow of a smile crawled onto his face when he walked into the kitchen, seeing a man with sandy feathered hair setting the table for breakfast, probably ordered from Teto's Bakery Cafe again. There were thin slices of banana laying atop the golden fluff.

Strangely, he suddenly wondered how homemade pancakes would taste. The perfection of professionally made pancakes seemed so unreal, it appeared almost synthetic. He had always eaten food ordered from a fancy bakery or some chef- that is, besides Sundays, when his mom would come home earlier to make dinner. Even that was rare. She was often on a business trip of some sort, like right now.

And it was seldom that Leon Kagamine, his father, had time to spend the morning with his son; he'd usually be out by 6:30 in the morning, rushing to the next appointment in line. It was never known when he would be back; sometimes around dinnertime, sometimes the very next day from an emergency operation or the like.

The older man turned his head over to where Len was, his glasses slightly fogged from the steam. "You've been staying up till 2:00 in the morning again, haven't you?"

"Can't help it." Len shoved a bite of pancake in his mouth. "I got a chemistry and history test today. There's this one person who's in history who cheated on the last assessment, so the teacher changed the entire format of the test. I don't know what to expect, so I guess it wouldn't be smart to take any risks."

"Really." His father set his plate down next to him and flipped open the television. "When your mom comes back from the piano convention in France, she's going to flip out when she finds out how late you've been staying up. You know how she is."

"Yeah... except she's not coming back for another, I think, five days." Len's eyes were fixed on the screen, never realizing how little he watched television. "Oh, dang, there's going to be a snowfall next week? In the middle of November?"

His father took a sip of his coffee and looked sideways over to Len.

"Did something... out of the ordinary happen to you lately?"

The image of an inexperienced musician's small hands on his piano flashed in his mind, but Len just wanted to see where his father was going with such a question for now. "Eh, probably. Your point?"

The older man looked at his son long and hard, his eyes fixed in an iron stare over the wire-rimmed glasses.

"Dunno. You don't usually... talk this much. Like something other than the usual is going on." He turned back to his coffee and downed the entire cup. "Not that it's a bad thing. I wish you would talk to me or your mom more. You really sure that piano's coming along fine fo-"

"Yes." Len snapped a little too quickly, scared that his parents would do anything that might upset his teacher. He immediately realized his mistake before his father even had the chance to raise his eyebrows at him, a silent warning for the recurring bad temper of his son's. "Oh. Uh. Sorry, didn't mean to sound angry there."

"And you don't apologize unless prompted to." His father chuckled and grabbed a bag full of medical files, swinging it over his shoulder. "Lighten up a little, maybe you'll be less irritated; you're really stressing yourself out on purpose. But back to what we're talking about, what is it, exactly? A new friend?"

A friend? He didn't know if he would call her that.

"Maybe. Rin Koizumi. She's a weird kid." He fiddled with a slice of banana. "Kind of loud and obnoxious. She doesn't go to my school, but sometimes she watches me play the piano, and last week she told me that she had always wanted to play the instrument, so I decided to teach her a little."

"Rin... Koizumi?" His father's eyebrows flickered, and he looked away. "Oh. Ah. Just wondering."

The son looked at his father quizzically, but the man just got up, buttoned up his coat, and headed out the door with a hasty goodbye.

* * *

 _WHACK!_

Len flinched when he felt the book slam down on his hand, leaving a swollen red mark on his palm.

"You're hopeless _._ I already told you to give up on that damn Mozart sonata because you were so terrible at it, but you barely improved on the third movement of the Moonlight Sonata. Last time I told you, you needed to put more power in your notes, but you didn't. _You goddamn didn't._ "

The book was brought down on his hand once again, harder this time. Len was silent. He didn't dare look at the man.

 _Those are my notes._ He cried indignantly inside. _Not yours._

"You think that throwing away that ruler would stop you from getting punished?" Akaito sneered, his voice ugly and harsh. "It doesn't matter; everyone would hear how terribly weak those notes are. _Everyone._ "

He threw the book down into his briefcase, and did not utter a word for an agonizingly long moment.

"I will see to it that you will improve by the next lesson. You still play like you're afraid of the sound." His voice dipped into a tone cold enough to send terrified shivers down Len's back. "The recital's in three weeks. You must work harder, or I will make sure that you will face the consequences."

The blonde didn't move until he heard the clicks of the redheaded monster's shoes disappear and the door slam shut.

His hands stung horribly, but he convinced himself that he was used to it.

He hobbled off the bench and went to a corner of the room, where he slumped down on the couch. A mirror hung next to him on the wall. The glass reflected a face completely shorn of any expression, as if he was bloodless and unscarred when the skin exposed from his rolled-up jacket sleeve screamed otherwise.

Len suddenly felt really tired. Not the sleepiness he felt in the morning, but the kind of feeling where he felt like he wanted to leave the prison of a room and walk away and start afresh in a different place with a new life.

Maybe his father was right, that all of this was just a cycle self-administered stress that Len could break out of. Except he didn't choose to. Should that have happened, he wouldn't have known where to go because such a thought would be banished back into the unexplored recesses of his mind whenever it managed to surface.

He dropped his sleeve over where the red marks were.

Presently, a pad of paper among the books sitting on the side table caught his eye.

His hand twitched.

A minute later, the house was dark and a note scrawled in blue pen was left sitting on the dining table.

 _Going out. Will be back sometime later. Len._

Perhaps it was just some sort of unexplained romance of departure that made Len want to run away for tonight, just for tonight. Whatever it was, he knew that it was out of an impulsive desire rather than an everyday duty.

Suddenly, he felt almost afraid. Like the world would turn against him and grab him by the throat. For a man whose everyday life had diminished into a dull trance, breaking out of his usual routine and finding himself suddenly by standing alone in the maze of people and streets and shops was, in a way, the most terrifying thing he had ever experienced. For a moment, he considered going back home.

Len heard that the subsiding tide was always dragged back by the pull of the moon, but it didn't happen with him.

His blue eyes stared ahead, trying to comprehend the fact that his feet was just moving with a mind of its own, taking him down the red-bricked sidewalks of the town. The street lights glowed bright in substitution of the evanescent sunlight from the horizon.

It wasn't enough to illuminate his path; Len wished he knew where he was going. He never knew where he was going.

Rin always talked about how pretty the town was, but he- and the other people from his school, always bogged down with a tight schedule like him- had thought of a stroll down the streets to be rather pointless. What was there to gain from it?

And it seemed that most people walking through the town right now thought the same way as well, for their eyes were fixed straight forward, their faces stern, walking quickly and mechanically as if they were anything but living beings. Always hurrying to accomplish more in the hour and never to find personal joy.

 _Not unlike me_ , he thought.

Len felt a pang of sadness when he passed by two boys of his own age, each holding a bag from a nearby shoe store. The people who were genuinely laughing and enjoying the pointlessness of life were few and far in between.

 _Must be nice to have a friend to talk to._

She hadn't even bother to come see him for the past ten days (he counted). Len wondered if she was out right now; she always wandered around town after school, maybe going to the cafe to buy an orange marmalade crepe. She always smelled like some sort of citrus fruit.

Something warm and soft grabbed his shoulder.

"Yo, Len!"

He spun around, almost knocking the hand off in a panic. His gaze hardened when he saw the person standing in front of him.

"Where the hell have _you_ been the entire week?" He snarled.

The street lights seemed a little brighter than before.


	5. Prima Volta

**A/N: Hmm. You can never say "Today's opposite day", right? Because if today _was_ opposite day, you would have to say, "Today's _not_ opposite day". But even if it wasn't opposite day, you'd still say "Today's not opposite day".**

 **Disclaimer: Assuming the above to be true- which of course, it isn't- I would own Vocaloid and its characters.**

 ***Note: SATs and homework and class counsel are really bogging us down, so, no, we won't leave, but we dunno how often we'll update :/**

* * *

"Prima volta"

 _For the first time_

* * *

Rin flinched, slightly taken aback by the sharp tone in his voice. His eyes pierced deeply into hers, a mix of anger and annoyance.

And worry. Perhaps. She dismissed it as an illusion.

"I had a school project that I had to finish up, and since none of my partners would work on it, I figured I had to be the one to take responsibility and do it all." Rin laughed. It would have been anything _but_ the truth; anytime the class was assigned a group project of some sort, she'd always be the target of her classmates' pity. Like she was never a teammate of equal caliber but rather someone incapable of doing anything by her own.

Pity. It disgusts her to no end.

 _Are you sure you're fine with this? Do you need help with that? I don't think you'll be able to do it._

"What about you, Len? How's life?"

"Same as always. I guess. But without you around, it's kind of boring-"

He suddenly bit off the last word, as if he tasted something bitter, and twisted his face back into the trademark scowl of his. Rin blinked in confusion.

"You don't look really happy. _Something_ must have happened." She pressed on.

He gritted his teeth, and for a moment she thought that he would throw a punch at her. "Okay, _fine_." He seethed, his collected facade dissipating as fast as the white puffs of his breath in the night air. "I'm frustrated, okay? My life's screwed up. I have absolutely no idea what the hell I need to do. I want to run away and _never_ come back to this goddamn town ever again."

Silence lingered for a moment in the air, save for the whooshing of the cars that passed by on the street.

"Where are you going to run off to?" Rin asked

He sighed.

"... I don't know."

"Len," she sighed, placing a hand on his shoulder as if to comfort him, "Sometimes you don't really go anywhere when you run away."

Feeling her hand, Len stiffened suddenly. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"I dunno." Rin felt his body tense up, and, sensing his discomfort, she dropped her hand. "You want to just wander around with me tonight? It's Friday, and I got nothing planned anyhow."

"Whatever. I guess it won't hurt."

Rin beamed, as if she didn't give a second thought about how he really wasn't in the mood right now to frolic in the meadows.

"Oh, hey, before we do that, you want to take a picture with me? I'll send it to you later."

"... why?" He looked at her quizzically. "And I don't even have your phone number."

"We'll exchange numbers later. But don't you ever take pictures when you're hanging out with your friends?"

And the moment that flew out of her mouth, Rin felt that something was off. Len didn't seem like the type of person who'd grow any sort of emotional attachment to anyone, and he certainly didn't seem to be too eager to be "friends" with her.

Were they friends? She didn't know. And neither did he, most likely.

"I don't feel the need to. Why'd I go out with my friends anyway? I don't have a lot of them anyhow." Len shrugged.

"Whatever." She held up her cell phone.

Rin had to strain herself from laughing at the way Len tried to twist his face into what might be technically called a smile.

Of course, there was absolutely no way she was going to tell him how intense chemotherapy had kept her bedridden in the hospital for days. How the smell of antiseptic made her so sick she wanted to throw up and how the ever growing mass inside her head was leaving her brain to rot.

At least there would be one less person in world who would keep reminding her of the unknown but surely approaching day that she would close her eyes and never open them again.

* * *

Len stared dumbfounded at the machine in front of him, the screen displaying two ninjas throwing miscellaneous items at him each other. In the background, loud music was blasting, and the smell of pizza lingered in the air.

If someone were to ask him where he would run away to, this would have been the last place he would have thought of.

"Never gone to the arcade before?"

"No."

"Never?"

"I feel like I'd be wasting my life if I ever did so."

Rin bursted out laughing.

"Dammit, stop being so _uptight_." She fished around her wallet for a quarter and jammed it into the coin slot. "You're trying to get rid of your stress. Can't you act like a kid for once?"

 _A kid_.

The flash of the loading screen reflected in Len's eyes staring off blankly. What should have been the memories of wearing a shirt dabbled in fingerpaints and watching weird movies and sneaking gummy bears from the kitchen cabinets was taken up by a giant void.

Even the attempt to craft some kind of fake anecdote of nothing for the sole purpose of snapping back at Rin wasn't something he could do.

He wondered what it was that had compressed his childhood so much, that he couldn't even pick out a time where he didn't wear the hardened mask of someone far too mature and taciturn for his age.

"Len?" Rin repeated.

"Oh. Um. I haven't played something like this before." He tentatively moved his hand to the joystick.

"Well, there's gotta be a first time for everything." The blonde girl cracked her knuckles and set her hands on the machine, gripping them tightly. "So you going to play? Or are you just afraid of being a _noob_?"

" _What_ did you just call me?" Her rudeness always seemed to strike him in the right spots. Len snarled a few colorful words under his breath and slammed his hand on the start button on the machine. Nobody would dare to challenge him without him fighting back.

He'd played piano for hours in a row before, but his hands had never felt so tired before.

It was a _good_ kind of tired.

* * *

"You like seashells?" Len shoved a fry in his mouth while he looked at the girl turning the small striped cone of salmon pink in her hands.

(He couldn't remember the last time he ate fast food. If he had ever eaten fast food. None of the chefs with all those fancy shenanigans that he ordered from would ever make _fries._ It certainly was an amusing experience for his taste buds.)

"I dunno. It just looks nice?"

What an odd reason it was to him.

All his life he derived pleasure from the reaping of some tangible benefit. But this girl in front of him could find genuine joy in something as stupid as a seashell. Maybe years of being harshly chained down had left some sort of an irreversible damage that disallowed him from doing so.

"And besides..."

He felt the palm of her hand on his cheek and the shell press up against the tip of his ear. Her skin was oddly cold to the touch.

"If you press your ear up against it, you can hear the ocean roar. It's wonderful with this one, it's the perfect shape and everything."

"Are you kidding me? That's just the occlusion effect, where-"

There it was again.

The fear of being too old to enjoy something silly. Len closed his eyes and forced himself to play along with her, even if he felt like an idiot.

"Alright. Yes. I hear the roar of the ocean."

She laughed and pulled the seashell away from him, placing it back into the plethora of many other odds and ends. Len eyes followed her hand, holding the object like it was something fragile and precious.

Her palm had been soft. Cold, but soft.

"But what do you find beautiful, Len?"

His eyes were still transfixed on her hands. The fingers were so slender and delicate, as if a tighter grip would be enough to shatter them like thin glass.

"Le-"

"Hey, kids, the store's about to close!" The storekeeper poked his head around the corner of the aisle and knocked his hand loudly against a shelf, making the two of them flinch.

Len dragged his eyes from her hand and headed towards the exit of the store, tossing the empty carton of fries into the trash can along the way.

They walked down the sidewalk in silence. Cars still sped by, having miles go before they could get a rest. The night tried to beckon the city to sleep, but the streetlights canceled out the shine of the stars, rebelling against what should have been darkness.

"So... how'd it feel when you ran away today?"

He bit his lip and looked down at his feet.

"It felt different. Nothing I've ever done before."

"A 'good different' or a 'bad different'?"

"Too lazy to think of a response."

"You're lazy? Well, that's a first." She clicked her tongue.

"Shut your mouth." He looked up to see the light on the other side of the street turn green. "Well, guess I'll be going home now. Good night."

"Good night, Len!"

She stepped forward.

Len sucked in a sharp breath, suddenly unsure what to do.

"Beauty" was something he'd often hear in from the critiques of judges, sitting at a table underneath the stage that he would play the piano upon. "Beauty" was a display of flawlessness and a pure, smooth white.

Rin was none of those things. He could tell by the way a few strands of her hair were tangled at the ends and the way she laughed a little too loudly and the way her arms encircled him too tightly, her hands pressed against his back too hard.

But when Len awkwardly returned the hug, he felt the definition of the word undergo a seemingly ridiculous process of alchemy.

* * *

The door to the Kagamine house slammed open at 10:37 pm. In stepped a weary looking Len, yawning loudly.

"LEN."

He nearly fell over. Down the stairs came his father, his eyes flashing in anger and worry and all those things that parents would have if they saw their son step into the house more than an hour after his curfew.

Leon towered over his son, staring sternly at him before his gaze suddenly softened.

"Where were you?"

Len froze for a moment.

"Walking around town with my new... friend."

That word still seemed foreign to him.

"I just wanted to escape for a bit." He looked down at his feet, feeling a pang of guilt for upsetting his father. "I couldn't find any other way to relieve my stress."

Leon frowned and thought for a moment.

"Is it piano?"

"It's kind o- eh, no, it's probably something else." Len clenched his fists. He almost spoke the truth but decided to hold back his words at the last second.

Leon opened his mouth as if to say something, but in the end just sighed and gave his son a weary smile. Len couldn't tell if his father knew or not, and for a moment, he felt himself feel a little sick from anxiety.

"I'll talk to you later. Just go get some sleep for now."

"Okay." Len started to go upstairs, but suddenly turned back around to face his father.

(He remembered the warmth of an embrace even if the night air had been cold- the feeling that was hitherto unfamiliar to him.)

"Dad?"

"Yeah?"

He reached over and hugged his father. "Good night."

Leon blinked in surprise and returned the hug. "Ah. Yeah. Good night."

* * *

Len flicked out the lights. The faint glow of his cell phone stuffed halfway in his pocket illuminated the walls. His hand, still scattered in bruises from the wrath of the ruler, picked it up as he flopped down on his bed to read the message.

 _Hey. Figured you'd want this pic. Good night once again! -Rin._

He zoomed in on the picture. Two faces, so uncannily similar yet different. Next to his somewhat forced smile was her bright, albeit slightly crooked grin, perfectly complemented by the way she flashed a peace sign to the camera.

It struck him as strange that the person with such delicate hands was someone so obnoxiously boisterous.

Len wondered what he would be like if he were able to be like her. Sometimes, an untamed, gold-speckled field of dandelions was more beautiful than a professionally cultivated garden of genetically enhanced roses.

The odd feeling from before resurfaced again, and he tried to will it away by turning off his cell phone and rolling over in his bed.

In the darkness, the shape of her hands never left his vision.


	6. Rinforzando

**BlueberryMuffin A/N: Well dang. This was the longest hiatus we've ever been on, not just this story but for all other ones as well. How cruel it was of us to abandon our dear readers! Anyhow summer's here so we're gonna get this thing rolling.**

 **Disclaimer: The world's pretty cruel as well- we do not (or will) have the pleasure of owning Vocaloid.**

* * *

"Rinforzando"

 _Emphasized, sudden crescendo on a single note_

* * *

Leon checked the barcode on the vacutainer, containing the blood sample.

He checked it twice, thrice. Making sure that the code matched up with the patient was crucial.

Blood tests were a common medical procedure that his patients often had to perform, but he still felt rather uncomfortable everytime he had to stick the needle into the arm of the small, frail girl in front of him. The scans for the day were finally completed, but there was no doubt that she will be coming back to the hospital sometime in the near future. It could be anything from a checkup to a surgery.

The machinery in front him beeped, and Leon checked the numbers listed on the screen. He frowned a bit. Her health wasn't improving much, from the looks of it.

 _She's getting dangerously close to stage IV, isn't she?_ Leon took the corner of his doctor's jacket and twirled it on his finger anxiously. _I'm already doing my best to stop it from becoming worse, but is there some way I can reverse the damage, now that she has reached this far?_

Truth to be told, he wasn't sure if it was the girl's life or his potential failure in curing her that worried him more. As a renowned doctor and surgeon, it was rare that he would encounter an issue that he couldn't solve, but for this situation, his confidence was slowly dropping.

She'd first discovered her problem a few years back, and recently she just moved to Crypton Town. Her parents were quite thankful that they'd found someplace to settle after several unsuccessful attempts at moving. It amazed Leon that she was still able to keep her happy-go-lucky self after all of it, but at least it was better than having to mope around like some of his other patients did.

 _But why does God have to be so cruel to her?_

"So... how are things looking, Dr. Kagamine?"

He turned back at her, taking care to revert to his calmly professional facade. "Oh, there's still some complex issues with the CMP, I'll email you the results later this week."

"Ooh, that's the comprehensive metabolic panel, isn't it? Where you have to find the levels of substances in the blood samples?" The girl piped up.

"Yes. You're doing quite well in your biology classes, I'm assuming."

"And piano too. Len's taught me about it a lot lately, and-"

The phone placed at the corner of Leon's desk rang. He felt a bit of relief; at least he would have an excuse for some time to mull over the problems. "Ah, I have some important business that I must attend to. Be sure to tell your parents to schedule your next appointment on the way out, yes?"

"Yup! Thanks, and have a nice day!" The girl hopped down from her patient's bed and waved him goodbye, closing the door behind her.

When he caught a glimpse of her smiling face, Leon decided that maybe it was the girl's life that worried him more.

Momentarily, he felt guilty that pride was still such a large factor in his anxiety. He really hated to admit it, but sometimes he would still feel frustrated over his number of successes and failures, not the actual condition of the patients themselves. It really was one of his major flaws.

Maybe it was the fact he saw her and his son together so often that made it so difficult to even look at her. Every time he thought about the time a small smile had unknowingly appeared on Len's face when he first talked about her ("She's a weird kid," Len had stated with a slightly flustered expression), Leon wanted to cry. It was the first time in his life that he'd ever hear his son talk about a friend with such happiness, try as Len might to hide it.

Working at a large hospital made Leon numb to the sight of death. He wasn't some heartless creature, but to him, death was just another common occurrence. Even if he was one of the best doctors, who saw success more often than failure. Seeing a team of nurses push a hospital bed down the hallway, with a cold, unmoving corpse, was nothing out of the ordinary.

Neither were the words, "Sorry, we did all we could."

He'd seen it all. Car accidents. Heart attacks. Organ failure.

Stage III brain cancer.

Leon wished that he could still remain numb for this case. More than that, he wished that his son could remain numb.

The phone rang again, and he picked it up.

"Hello?"

* * *

The front door slammed shut.

"I'm home."

"Hi dad!" Len ran down the stairs, a cell phone gripped in his hand, an eager expression on his face. "Hey, dad, Rin asked me to hang out at the mall with some of her friends on Friday evening. Can I go? Please? I promise I won't go over my curfew like last time."

Leon blinked in surprise, lacking words for a split second. "Ah- don't you have piano lessons that day?"

"Yeah... but I told her I'd go after it." There was a slight edge to his voice.

He hated to be an overbearing or worrisome parent, but Leon often wondered if Len was having any trouble with piano lately. Yet another recital was coming up in three weeks, and another one in two months, and it would be rather ill-timed if something were to happen right now. Leon might have never actually observed Akaito's teachings before, but he figured that the teacher was doing something right, for many had praised Len for his exceptional playing.

"Well, I guess as long as it's after your piano lesson, sure. But if we tell you to come back at anytime, for whatever reason, you must listen, got it?"

"Got it. Thanks!" And Len was off again, sprinting up the stairs.

"Len! Don't run on the stairs!" Came a muffled voice from a bedroom. Leon smiled wryly. He'd missed the sound of Lola's naggings. The house suddenly felt complete once again, now that his wife was back from her business trip at France (although he guessed she would be cranky for a few days from the jet lag).

"Sorry mom!"

Leon dropped his bag of medical files on the kitchen table, the uneasiness settling in once again. He could never bring himself to tell his son about her, could he? It was kind of surprising that Len still didn't know about it- Rin must have hid all of it rather well. Including the surgery scar on her head from from a month ago. Rin always wore a large ribbon to conceal it.

He wondered how Lola would react if she knew about Len and Rin. And if she did know, surely she'd feel upset if she knew of Rin's condition as well, right?

Maybe it was best not to tell the two of them for the time being.

* * *

The hands on the kitchen clock struck eight. The sky behind the scarlet drapery of the kitchen window was dark, but the streetlights casted an artificial white glow on the streets.

Leon stared out the glass, absentmindedly scrubbing the plate he held in his hand.

"Leon?"

He turned to his wife, sitting at the kitchen table.

"Yes, honey?"

"Did something happen to Len?" Lola's gaze was fixed on her cup of chamomile tea, but Leon could read the confusion in her red eyes, accentuated by the dark circles underneath. "I mean... he's more energetic lately. Happier too. I'm not too concerned, I suppose it's something good, but I'm just wondering if you know anything."

Leon anxiously sucked in a breath and put a dish a bit too harshly on the drying rack.

His wife sometimes helped him in organizing the medical files, but he assumed that she still doesn't know about Rin's just yet. _Probably wouldn't cause any trouble to tell her_ , he thought.

"He's found a new friend. Her name's Rin Koizumi."

"A new friend. And it's a girl, huh?" Lola lifted an eyebrow. She took a sip of her tea, a smile ghosting her lips.

"Yeah, it surprised me too. Perhaps it's puppy love too. That kind of stuff- he's at that age anyhow." Romance was probably just a half-comprehended notion at best to Len, but it was still a possibility. "She's a nice girl. A bit on the rambunctious side, but an interesting kid."

Lola laughed and set down her cup, rubbing her tired eyes.

"He's okay out there, right, Leon?"

Leon stared out the window again, wondering what Len was doing right now. Laughing, maybe. Being carefree, oblivious to Rin's medical records tucked away neatly in the cold steel of the file cabinets. He could almost see her dragging him down the mall, a stream of excited chatter coming out her mouth while Len wore his classical irritated look.

"Yes, yes he is," he sighed, and continued washing the dishes.


	7. Caesura

**ChocolatePancake A/N: BlueberryMuffin is Taiwanese and Japanese, and she says that in east Asia, Buddhism is one of main religions. And there's this deity called Guanyin, who has the ability to sprout 1000 hands. How cool is that? Like you can play the piano in so many different ways, master multitasking, and full combo all songs in Love Live.**

 **Moving on from the weebness of it all.**

 **Disclaimer: The day I own Vocaloid is the day I full combo Soldier Game in Love Live.**

* * *

Caesura

 _Break, stop_

* * *

"So this is _the_ Len you've been talking about?" The lime-haired girl leaned over and stared at Len in awe, as if he was some bizarre life form from another galaxy. Beside her sat a taciturn girl with white hair, staring at Len intensely but never making a comment. "Isn't he the piano prodigy?"

"If you're that blind, maybe you could use the glasses you wear on top of your head?" Len snarked.

"How rude!" Gumi pulled the shades over her eyes and slammed her cup of carrot juice on the table. "I got these at the store next to the food court. The clearance sales are amazing. Hey, you'd probably look cooler with sunglasses as well. Makes you look less grumpy."

Len turned to Rin. "Your friends are weird."

"You're one to talk," quietly remarked Ia.

"Birds of a feather flock together." Rin's eyes were fixed on her orange marmalade donut, but there was a small smirk on her lips. "Which means you're one of us now. Too bad the guys are doing their own stuff today, they're not much better than us. I'll make sure to drag them with us next time."

Len groaned in frustration and ran his fingers through his bangs.

He wondered, how long will it take for him to comfortably settle into a group of friends? He was so eager an hour ago but now... it seemed as if a cross look or a sarcastic comment was a reflex, something he couldn't control. They were all too impulsive, too vehement, something that he probably would never get used to.

A moment later, he found himself walking with Rin and her friends around the crowded mall, not doing much in particular. It was pretty relaxing after he had to suffer yet another session of his piano teacher's screams and beatings. The bruises on his forearms were turning purple once again, but such common occurrences were of not much concern to him.

"You know about the music store they have here, right?" Gumi was chattering up a storm. On occasion Len wondered if he would snap from having to deal with two Rins. "But, I figured you'd know. You're the musician here. It'd be pretty stupid if you didn't."

Ia suddenly stopped and turned to Len. "It is a great place, and they always have some sort of upcoming event going on in there. I highly suggest it. Maybe you'll find something just for the _two_ of you. Gumi and I will go to the bookstore in the meantime."

Gumi opened her (already usually open) mouth to protest, but something seemed to click in her brain, and she grabbed Ia by the arm and promptly dragged her off.

"Meet you guys back in the store next to the food court!" She yelled.

Len was pretty sure they knew something he and Rin didn't, the way the two girls were exchanging looks as they walked off, but he was too tired to ask. Rin just laughed and strolled over to the store.

The interior was spacious and lightly smelled of green tea. Few people were scattered around the area. There were wooden shelves, each filled with a variety of sheet music. Some of them were brand new, some of them had yellowed with age, as if the papers would crumble upon a single touch. Instruments were put on display, and the remarkably expensive ones were locked up in dusty glass cases.

Len could tell that Rin's eye was caught by the luxurious Mason and Hamlin grand piano in the middle of the store, sitting among the other pianos. No doubt that the thing will cost tens of thousands of dollars.

"Good afternoon." A man walked up to Rin and Len, his voice quiet and deep. The attire was rather unusual, something resembling what a samurai would wear, but it oddly fit in with the elegant atmosphere of the store. A name tag was pinned on the front: _Gakupo Kamui_. "Are you looking for something?"

"Not really... oh! But I'm just wondering, do you have any sheet music for _The Seasons_ by Tchaikovsky?" Rin piped up, a gleam in her eyes. Beside her, Len grimaced, annoyed by her garrulous nature as usual. She took no notice. "My favorites are _January_ and _April_ , and I'd really like to try all of them out, though it seems pretty difficult."

"Of course. We have a few books of those in the second shelf down from where the violins are placed," Gakupo replied. "Are you a piano student?"

Rin jabbed her finger in Len's direction. "He's my teacher. Sort of."

"Ah. So, you two play the piano together?"

"Yes," Len answered, somewhat hesitantly.

"In that case, please take a flyer." Gakupo motioned his hand over to the front desk, where a stack of papers sat on one corner.

Rin picked up a sheet. "A piano contest?"

"It takes place on January 30, in the theater at the edge of this town." He ran his fingers through his dark purple hair and chuckled softly. "Here's the catch. The only pieces that are allowed are four-hand piano pieces. You must sign up two weeks from today, both you and the person that you will be playing with."

He wondered what Akaito would say if he saw him and Rin together, the hands of an aspiring pianist and the hands of an amateur dancing on the same keyboard. He could already see the disappointment glare and hear the bitterness in his teacher's voice.

Len wanted to decline the offer at first, but he wavered a bit when he looked over at Rin, brimming with a feverish thrill. She was probably already imagining the crowds of people and the bright stage lights. The first time he played at a recital, he surely shared the same emotions. But as the years passed on, the excitement seemed to had eroded away, turning into something more resembling annoyance.

Although he'd probably never say it, not even on his deathbed, there definitely was something to Rin's energy that was contagious. He wondered if he would be able to love the feeling of an audience's admiration or the piano's sound echoing in the theater again, if he were to sit on the pianist's bench next to Rin on stage.

"I'll think about it," he muttered, pushing all thoughts aside.

* * *

Len sometimes heard the boys in his class complain about waiting while their girlfriends shopped. It certainly was no secret that some females were slow shoppers. In the time that it took for his mother to pick between two shirts, he probably could invent a time traveling machine and even finish his math homework.

Strangely, he felt mildly amused just watching Rin wander around the store with Gumi, the two of them in a heated discussion over something trivial. His eyes were fixed on her white bow. It bobbed with her every step, and he imagined that it would perk up whenever she was overcome with a fit of excitement and droop whenever she pouted childishly.

"It's impolite to stare, you know."

He flinched and nearly fell off the bench. Beside him sat Ia, who seemingly materialized out of thin air. She was reading her newly bought book.

"I didn't ask for _your_ opinion," he retorted, regaining his posture. "What made you think I was _staring_ at Rin?"

"Actually, like Gumi said, you're just rude in general. Besides, I never mentioned Rin's name in the first place, just saying. You're too easily agitated. Loosen up, man." She flipped the page, and a faint smirk grew on her usually stoic face.

Len's face was burning with embarrassment, but he bit his tongue this time. He sometimes wished his emotions weren't hidden behind his cold front, but there was always the need to shoot back in an attempt to recover a lost sense of pride.

 _One of the seven sins. And my worst sin,_ he though bitterly.

"I'll go and find Rin," he huffed, getting up from his seat.

Ia said nothing, and turned another page.

He found Rin in an aisle of hair accessories, with Gumi nowhere to be found.

"Len?" She turned to him, holding a few brightly colored ribbons in her hand. "Oh, by the way, Gumi just remembered she had an essay due tomorrow, and she ran off suddenly. We can leave now, if you want to. You've been waiting a while."

"No, it's okay." Len picked up one of the ribbons. It was made of sky blue satin. "You want to buy these? Maybe you could try them out right now."

"I- Ah, not right now," Rin replied, looking at the mirror on the wall uneasily. "Maybe next time."

"Come on, take it off." Len reached over and pulled at the end of the bow on Rin's head. The knot started to loosen "I'll tie it on for y-"

The strip of cloth was pulled off. And attached to it was several locks of her hair.

There was still golden hair that grew out from the middle of the back of her head and curled around slightly at her shoulders. Rin wasn't really bald. But above that, Len could see the glossiness and the whiteness of her smooth scalp. He could see the thin outline of her veins and the large bandage wrapped around the back of her head and the row of stitches in a cruel, neat line.

The blue of Rin's eyes briefly turned into a stormy color, and she snatched her ribbon from his hand, turning her back to him.

Len couldn't read her face, but he could almost feel her expression through the transparency of her scalp.

"Don't look."

He turned away. He could hear the soft rustle of her ribbon as she tied it back on, but what he heard was mostly his heart, pounding in his head and throat and stomach.

* * *

When the three of them left the mall, large snowflakes were already floating down from the sky. There was only an inch on the ground, but Len worried that it was a prelude to a potential blizzard.

A few minutes later at an intersection, Ia waved goodbye to them, and he once again felt all too conscious of himself. It was only him and Rin left.

In the whiteness of the snow, he could see the whiteness of Rin's scalp, the image never fading from his vision. The snow itself, too, was something so smooth and fragile. A touch was all it took to interrupt that perfect smoothness and break the surface.

Rin was walking briskly in the snow, leaving footprints in a neat pattern.

Len couldn't help but think that, in the end, the snow would meet its inevitable fate and melt away to water. He looked at Rin, and wondered if all beautiful things only had a fleeting moment of existence.

"Hey. Um."

"Yeah?"

Len cleared his throat. "I'm sorry about earlier. You know."

"Oh. Don't worry about that, it's been there for a while."

The two walked on in silence. The short, awkward conversation had done little to alleviate the tension.

Len decided his words were useless. He swallowed his pride, reached over, and took Rin's hand.

For now, he could swallow his pride. He wanted to block it out of his hearing, but he could hear his heart again, pounding in his head and throat and stomach. For a much more different reason this time.

She didn't back away or say anything. Her face was still expressionless. Still, he felt her press her palm tightly against his, her fingers curling around his hand.

Not a word was exchanged for the rest of the way back, and Len realized how much he missed the sound of her voice. At least her intertwined fingers could temporarily compensate for the silence.


End file.
